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Zoey, JD, Lawyer

Category: Consumer Protection Law

Satisfied Customers: 23581

Experience: 18+ years of NYS litigation experience.

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I just logged onto a porn site -- did not click on anything

Customer Question

i just logged onto a porn site -- did not click on anything -- it was on my phone and got a pop up that says i was accused of viewing/storage and/or dissemination of banned pornography. it goes on to say other things. when i click ok another screens pops up and says ATTENTION? your appleID and mobile device has been blocked for safety reasoning. and says i need to pay a $500 fine via paypal cash card or i will be fined.

You are the victim of a very well known scam. Actually, it's more than a well-known scam. It's a fairly nasty computer virus that locks the computer and tells you that you're going to get arrested if you don't send the government $500 via a PayPal cash card or some other untraceable means of payment.

I can assure you that you are not going to get arrested. I know you have done nothing illegal. The only porn on the web you can get arrested for is where the actors are under 18, but even then you'd have to view it or download it to have done anything wrong. And you would never get a pop-up notice like the one you received from the US government. The government is not allowed to invade your privacy like that.

When the federal government really wants you on suspicion of a computer crime, they don't give you notice so that you get the time to wipe out your hard drive or skip town. They just turn up at your door one day and surprise you with a warrant that will let them impound all of your electronic devices which can access the internet. And when that happens, you can't ever stop an arrest by paying off a government agent with a PayPal My Cash card. This pop-up is made to scare you so that you will pay up, but the very idea of that is ridiculous.

However, you do have to take this message seriously on other grounds. Your computer is now infected with malware. The longer the victim leaves this virus on his machine, the more difficulty you can get into. Not with the law, of course. The law has nothing to do with this. But not only does the virus scare you into thinking you're about to be arrested, but it plants spyware which can lead to hacking and identity theft, and the spyware is the only real problem you've got.

You can read many warnings about this scam on the web. And here's one from the FBI , which does assure people that they are not at all involved in this particular scam.

Even if your computer appears to be okay, don't ignore this. Take your computer to a live technician to debug it, or ask one of our verified computer experts on this site how to get rid of the FBI virus, and they can walk you through it. There are solutions to get rid of it on the web, but it's hard to know what's reliable and what will just add more spyware.